Disconnected Connections
by YamiTami
Summary: There is always someone who can see the pattern beneath the madness. The only question is: what will the madness yield? Will it be truth? Death? Or perhaps more madness? // longfic, post MGS2 AU, gay AND het couples, some violence, some swearing


**A/N:** This plotbunny struck me before MGS4, and since I haven't played the game the story has remained free of the influence (except for Sunny's existence).

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The fire was contained quickly and efficiently, the hard efforts of the firefighters saving the small one-room shack that stood by the highway. The roof had mostly fallen but all four walls remained standing; the blaze didn't have the chance to fully spread from the center of the room where it was sparked. The place reeked of gasoline, lighter fluid, and a couple other readily available accelerants; it was obviously arson.

It was also obvious that the owner of the house was completely insane.

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A photograph of a young boy, thin and worn and covered in filth, comments written on post-its underneath.

_ALIASES: White-Haired Devil, Silver Devil, The Honest Killer, The Perfect Killer, Wraith, Silver Ghost, Gray Ghost, Null, Gray Fox, Frank Jaeger._

_Child soldier. Excelled. Rescued by BB but the poison runs too deep. Made null and void, saved again but it was too late. BB learned, didn't make the same mistake again. Knew he couldn't save them from fate but he could be the one who controlled it._

_Followed BB to the grave. Was pulled back. Never free, never finished. Was lead to frozen fields to die well. Was it enough?_

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The detectives found the man's remains in the center of the ashes. COD was a high powered shotgun blast to the head. Self inflicted. It appeared that the man pulled down half of the papers on his walls, piled them in the center with his few pieces of furniture, lit it off, then stood in the center and pulled the trigger.

Though the walls were scorched it was clear that all four had been completely covered with articles, photos, and his own crazed notes. Pieces of cord connected blackened silhouettes, thumbtacks dotted the walls like acne... the police got the feeling that even without the missing information they'd never have made sense of the chaos.

There were a few readable scraps here and there, but most of what they did know about the deceased's obsession was gleaned from a patch of unburned papers on one wall, protected from the brunt of the blaze by air currents that nudged the flames to other corners. It still wasn't much, barely three feet in diameter, but it was enough to convince the investigators that the man was deranged. Conspiracy nut, possible schizophrenic, it all became too much and this was the end he chose.

Simple, cut and dry, nothing more to it than that.

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A page torn out of a wiretap transcript marked 'BB to CC'.

_"...she was powerful and that was all they needed to know before they tossed a couple combat boots at her and set her lose on the world. She was powerful, but she was the wrong damn kind of powerful for battle. Intellectual psychics can distance themselves, usually to the point of trying to crush all the small minded ants wandering around this planet, but the emotional types? Their power doesn't come from the head, it comes from the heart, and they can't separate themselves from all that pain and rage._

_"I already knew what would happen if I spirited her away to a refugee camp. They'd snatch her right back up and throw her back into battle where she did not belong. I hate to say it but at least Fox is made for this. She's not._

_"I I knew I couldn't save her just as I couldn't save him. But I knew that I could do something. I couldn't get her out but I could keep her away from the brink. Maybe. But maybe was enough of a reason to try._

_"That's why I strong-armed her into the FOXHOUND recruit program..."_

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The town was small and backwards by the world's standards, still content to live a life free of cell phone towers and hybrid cars. It was a haven for technophobes and that's why the strange man's arrival hadn't been so strange. His violent self-made death was the first thing anyone took note of. A pity, the people said over the grocery store counter, he seemed like a nice man. A pity his illness took him.

No one from that town would ever know the reason for his suicide. The reason pulled up to the burned out shell of a shack in a battered old Jeep the day after it all happened. He kicked at the ashes with boots too expensive to be marred by wet soot, cursed the walls and the dead man's name as he shuffled through the debris.

But then he found that little three foot patch of madness saved from the flames by a draft and maybe by fate, if you believed in such things. He pulled out a camera and photoed the golden information contained on that one wall, as well as the lingering scraps still clinging to the gray paint elsewhere. He was gone before the cops came back to take down the yellow tape.

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A photograph of a clearing in a dense jungle in the wake of a firefight. More post-it notes dotted the wall beneath.

_Special ops slumber party in the jungle. Three teams, three organizations, all on separate but related missions. From chaos comes order, if you can only see it, and THEY did. The enemy was tipped off and they came to destroy the goldmine of rescued informants and hostages, of tapes and photos and everything else._

_Two soldiers volunteered. Stay, fight, delay and die. But the mission would live on, and because they were soldiers that was all they needed._

_One to shoot, one to scream. Physical and psychic working together. Dying together. The teacher and the commander stood proud and sad. Knew it was the only way._

_BB split the old bandana in two, one for each. To guide them to sorrow perhaps. Perhaps they found fear and fury for they reached the end alive, if severely injured and in pain._

_She was taken. All were told she died. They lied._

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The visitor tapped his sooty boots in time with the music blaring over the sound of the wind whipping around him as he roared down the highway. The information contained on his digital camera would make his employer a _very_ happy man.

He whistled as he texted a simple message: _got it_.

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A black and white photograph of a girl, around 13, full of defiance and spite. A page ripped out of a spiral notebook was pinned up beside it.

_Stolen psychic held in a cell. Made a sleeping Eve. The seed used before used again but planted in a different way, more like the real way, no advanced aging. One born, prototype of the psychic soldiers._

_BB's daughter lives._


End file.
